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Finale Lyrics – Warriors

Finale Lyrics

Kenita Miller, Sasha Hutchings, Julia Harriman, Gizel Jiménez, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Kim Dracula, Alex Boniello, Colman Domingo & Aneesa Folds
Play song video
[COCHISE]
There it is, the top of the Wonder Wheel
The Warriors are here

[COWGIRL]
Home alive
We made it home alive

[COCHISE]
It's been a long fight just to see the ocean

[MERCY]
I've never seen the ocean

[COCHISE]
The Warriors are here

[COWGIRL & REMBRANDT]
Home alive, we made it home alive

[COCHISE]
But we didn't all make it

[COWGIRL]
Can't stop thinkin' about them—
[REMBRANDT]
What are we gon' do?

[COWGIRL & SWAN]
And how do we carry on without them?


[REMBRANDT]
What are we gon' do?

[SWAN]
Anyone sick of runnin'?

[COWGIRL]
Ajax

[COCHISE]
Th? wild one

[REMBRANDT]
The fighter

[COCHISE]
Th? survivor

[SWAN]
The toughest
[COCHISE]
The one you want in your corner

[COWGIRL]
"Fuck around…"

[COWGIRL & SWAN]
"…Find out"

[REMBRANDT]
Fox

[COCHISE]
The quiet one

[MERCY]
The stunner

[COWGIRL]
So shy—

[SWAN]
Until she wasn't

[REMBRANDT]
That's right!
[COWGIRL]
So brave—

[COCHISE]
Spoke truth to power—

[COCHISE & SWAN]
In our darkest hour

[COWGIRL & REMBRANDT]
Cleon!

[COCHISE]
Our leader

[COCHISE & SWAN]
Who dreamed of something sweeter

[REMBRANDT]
She believed—

[COCHISE]
We believed—

[REMBRANDT & COCHISE]
In Cyrus

[REMBRANDT, COCHISE & COWGIRL]
And if Cyrus were alive, we'd be home free

[MERCY]
I gotta be free

[REMBRANDT, COCHISE & COWGIRL]
And without them here beside us…

[SWAN]
Stay with me

[REMBRANDT, COCHISE & COWGIRL]
…Who are we?

[MERCY]
I gotta be free

[SWAN]
Well, Mercy, you're a Warrior now

[COCHISE]
She is?

[COWGIRL]
She is?

[MERCY]
I am?

[SWAN]
You're in our corner

[COCHISE]
She is

[COWGIRL]
I guess

[MERCY]
But I want more than the corner

[SWAN, spoken]
Mercy

[COCHISE]
Warriors, look alive

[COWGIRL & REMBRANDT]
C'mon c'mon

[COCHISE]
There's a hearse comin' up the avenue

[LUTHER]
Warriors, come out to play-ay
Warriors, come out to play-ay
Warriors, come out to play-ay
Warriors! Come out to play-ay!

[Part II: The Coney Island Shore]

[SWAN]
Stay behind me
I'ma lead 'em to the beach
Beyond the boardwalk
So we're just out of reach
Stay behind me
Let him find me

[LUTHER]
What took you so long?
We're impatient but glad that we waited

[CROPSY]
Yep

[LUTHER]
Wow, you sure are strong
But it looks like just half of you made it

[CROPSY]
Yep

[LUTHER]
So let's see who survives
Here on your hometown boardwalk
Pow, all out of quarters, no more extra lives
I am the ghost and I've hunted you

[SWAN]
Stop
Who the fuck are you and why are you here?

[LUTHER]
Don't you know?

[SWAN]
We're the Warriors
Mess around in Coney, you might disappear—

[LUTHER]
Here we go
Girls, you're gonna die
Don't you know I killed Cyrus?

[SWAN, spoken]
Why?

[LUTHER]
No reason!
I like doing stuff like that!

Shoot the queen!
Blame the girls!
Ride around, watch the world burn!
No emotion
Just a race to the ocean, watch the world burn
See this gun?
Better yet, see me squeeze this gun!

[WARRIORS]
Woah woah stop stop stop

[SWAN]
One on one

[LUTHER]
What?

[SWAN]
Drop the gun—

[MERCY]
—Or you're chicken!

[LUTHER]
Ha! You're crazy, you're dead!

[WARRIORS]
Sand in your eye!

[LUTHER]
Ow!

[WARRIORS]
Punch in your gut!

[LUTHER shoots his gun as he goes down. SWAN is unscathed.]

[SWAN, spoken]
You missed me! And what?

[WARRIORS]
Gun in the sand!

[LUTHER, spoken]
Get off me!

[SWAN]
There's something you still don't understand

[WARRIORS]
And no one is coming to lend you a hand!

[CROPSY]
Nope!

[SWAN]
No one is coming to lend you a hand

[CROPSY]
Run run run run run!

[SWAN]
Sand in your eye
Hate in your heart
You only know how to break shit apart
Your crew is scared of you
See how it scatters
My crew would die for me
Loyalty matters

[SWAN, WARRIORS]
We're the Warriors (What!)
And our story is (What!)
In our loyalty that's where the glory is (What!)

[SWAN]
Not in blowing it up but in holding it down
Now
You're going down
You're going down

[Standing over a cowering LUTHER, SWAN and the WARRIORS look up to see the RIFFS descend onto the beach.]

[RIFFS]
Yeah, right!
And beautiful and black against the white sand and sky
It's the Gramercy Riffs, standin' by

[RIFFS & MASAI]
And beautiful and black against the white sand and sky
It's the Gramercy Riffs, standin' by

[MASAI]
Yeah, hi
It's Masai
'Gainst this white sand and sky
The right hand of Cyrus, 'til right when she died
Then the night filled with cries, horrors, frights, and surprise
And true martyrs, they don't die, but it's so hard to say goodbye

How to honor her persona, wouldn't she want us to try
To pull the truth into the light
Fuck the truce 'n' do what's right
So the troops been on the loose to find where Lucifer hides
Oh, Luther
Scoop him up, you guys

[LUTHER, spoken]
No, no, it was the Warriors!

[RIFFS]
Yeah, right

[LUTHER, spoken]
It wasn't us, it was them (It wasn't us, it was them)
It wasn't us, it was them!

[RIFFS]
Yeah, right

[MASAI, spoken]
You Warriors are good
Real good

[CLEON]
The best

[Part III: When We All Come Home Alive]

[REMBRANDT]
Cleon—

[COWGIRL, spoken]
Oh shit…

[COCHISE]
Cleon—

[MERCY]
Cleon?

[SWAN]
Cleon

[CLEON]
My Warriors are here
Where's Fox?

[SWAN]
The cops

[CLEON]
And Ajax?

[SWAN & COCHISE]
The cops

[CLEON]
Damn
And you?

[MERCY]
Call me Mercy

[SWAN]
She's a Warrior

[CLEON]
Done

[REMBRANDT]
Cleon, how are you—

[REMBRANDT & COCHISE]
Home alive? You made it home alive

[CLEON]
I don't know how I made it
I don't know why I'm still alive and some of us gone
I don't think I'm special
Cyrus was special, how does she live on?
I know this is our corner

[COCHISE]
How do we go on?

[CLEON]
And even though I'm home, I've got a knot in my chest
That I can't untangle

[COCHISE & COWGIRL]
How do we go on?

[CLEON]
I try to find an angle, try to do my best
I know

[CLEON & SWAN]
When I am with you

[MERCY]
I know when I am with you

[CLEON]
The trouble in the world's a little easier to face
I know I can continue

[SWAN & MERCY]
When I am with you

[CLEON]
It's all our turf
This is the sound of something being born

[WARRIORS & CLEON]
Someday in the city, we'll be ready for more
We'll wander through the city without goin' to war
We're dancin' on the corners we were battling for (Coney Island)
When we all come home alive

[CLEON]
This is the sound of something being born

[WARRIORS & MERCY]
Someday in the city, we won't have to run (Far beyond the city)
Each time a broken person gets ahold of a gun
Breathe easy every night knowing we'll see the sun (The city)
When we all come home alive

[CLEON]
This is the sound of something being born

[WARRIORS]
Someday in the city our music will play
We'll wander through the city as light as the day
And the world will know the Warriors are making our way
When we all come home alive (When we all come home)
When we all come home alive (When we all come home)
When we all come home alive

[WARRIORS]
Ah-she-ca! Ah-ah-she-ca! (Yeah)
Ah-she-ca! Ah-ah-she-ca! (Huh)
Ah-she-ca! Ah-ah-she-ca! (Hey)
Warriors, Warriors

[CLEON]
This is the sound of something being born

Song Overview

Personal Review

“Finale” closes Warriors with eight restless minutes of horns, hand-claps, and overlapping chants, the way a subway car rattles when half of Brooklyn is standing inside. The track is less curtain-call than communal exhale: each singer leans into a fragment of story, then hands the mic to the next voice, until the whole gang is breathing in unison.

The lyrics stop pretending anyone can do this alone. When Kenita Miller croons “This is the sound of something being born,” I felt the hairs rise on my forearm. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis built a three-act coda that refuses tidy closure; instead, it keeps flicking a match at old gasoline—loyalty, grief, belonging—until the flame finally takes.

Song Meaning and Annotations

Act I, “The Wonder Wheel,” is a roll-call of the dead and the nearly broken. The music swaggers like a Bronx block party, yet every shouted name (“Ajax … Fox … Cleon!”) lands with the weight of a cracked headstone. The push-pull between celebration and survivor’s guilt sits right on the beat, a salsa piano teasing its way under boom-bap drums.

Act II drags us onto “The Coney Island Shore,” where Kim Dracula’s metal-tinged Luther hijacks the groove. He spits 8-bit arcade metaphors—no more “extra lives”—while distorted guitars gnash at the orchestration. Swan answers with a Motown-leaning hook, turning the brawl into a call-and-response sermon on community versus chaos.

Then the Gramercy Riffs march in, their choir stacked thick and low, the album’s lone taste of gospel-trap. Masai’s verse, half eulogy, half street-corner prophecy, pivots the narrative: vengeance bends into justice.

Act III (“When We All Come Home Alive”) cracks open a different register—lush Rhodes chords, faint disco strings—and lets Cleon’s rasp carry the dream of a city without war. The refrain “This is the sound of something being born” circles back to Track 1, turning the album into a Möbius strip; the journey ends where it began, but the map feels upended.

Under the melody run three recurring images. First, sand—in Luther’s eye, in Swan’s fist—symbolising both abrasion and purification. Second, the ocean Mercy has never seen, standing for possibility just out of reach. Third, the corner: once mere turf, now reimagined as canvas for community. Together they form a trilogy of escape, arrival, and renewal.

Verse Highlights

Verse 1 (Roll-call)

“Home alive, we made it home alive”

Spoken almost sotto voce, this line cracks the bravado. The final syllable lingers on a suspended fourth, denying easy resolution.

Chorus (“We’re the Warriors”)

“Not in blowing it up but in holding it down”

The rhyme tucks a manifesto inside a playground taunt—Miranda’s signature sleight-of-hand.

Bridge (Masai)

“True martyrs, they don’t die, but it’s so hard to say goodbye”

A plainspoken couplet delivered over a chord that never settles, mirroring a city that never sleeps.

Song Credits

  • Featured Vocalists: Kenita Miller, Sasha Hutchings, Julia Harriman, Gizel Jiménez, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Kim Dracula, Alex Boniello, Colman Domingo, Aneesa Folds
  • Producers: Mike Elizondo, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Eisa Davis
  • Composers / Lyricists: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Eisa Davis
  • Release Date: October 18, 2024
  • Genre: Musical theatre, hip-hop, salsa-funk fusion
  • Length: 8 minutes 08 seconds
  • Label: Atlantic Records
  • Instruments: Rhodes piano, brass section, electric guitar, trap kit, congas, strings
  • Mood: Defiant ? yearning ? jubilation
  • Album: Warriors
  • Poetic Meter: Predominantly trochaic tetrameter with hip-hop syncopations
  • Copyright: © 2024 Atlantic Recording Corp.

Songs Exploring Themes of Loyalty and Homecoming

While Swan and Mercy stare down the shoreline, I’m reminded of three other tracks that grapple with belonging.

Home – The Wiz (1975). Dorothy’s blues-inflected prayer for return shares the same ache as “Finale,” though the orchestration leans orchestral where Finale rides a break-beat. Both tunes treat “home” less as geography, more as earned revelation.

One Day More – Les Misérables (1985). Like the Warriors, Hugo’s rebels stand on the brink; each vocal thread insists on solidarity even as the arrangement splinters into counter-melodies. Listen to the swelling counterpoint—Miranda and Davis echo that polyphony when Cowgirl, Cochise, and Rembrandt trade eulogies.

When You Believe – The Prince of Egypt (1998). The Warriors’ chant “Ah-she-ca” performs a similar ritual function: singing hope into being. Both tracks pivot from earthly struggle to spiritual uplift, bridging gospel stylings and pop hooks.

Questions and Answers

Why is the track split into three parts?
Each part mirrors a physical location on the gang’s odyssey, letting the instrumentation mutate with the setting—fanfare atop the Wonder Wheel, metallic thrash on the shoreline, and soulful groove for the sunrise homecoming.
Did “Finale” chart as a single?
No; the album charts did the heavy lifting, debuting at #1 on Billboard’s Compilation Albums list.
Which motif ties the whole album together?
The “ah-she-ca” chant first heard in “Warriors’ Cypher,” resurfacing here as a victory lap.
Is there a planned stage version?
Miranda and Davis have hinted they’ll explore adaptation talks in 2025, but nothing is green-lit yet.
What’s the significance of Mercy joining the gang?
Her induction reframes the Warriors as a chosen family rather than territorial clique, underscoring the story’s argument that community outlasts violence.

Awards and Chart Positions

The parent album Warriors debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Compilation Albums chart and cracked the UK Top 40 downloads list, a rare feat for a concept-musical recording.

How to Sing?

Range: Alto G3 up to belt D5 (for Mercy), tenor A2–B4 (for Luther’s screlt), and a mixed-gender ensemble blend in the mid-register.

Breath Tips: The rapid-fire roll-call needs crisp consonants; use diaphragmatic pulses. For the gospel swell, switch to connected legato and avoid pushing chest voice above B4.

Tempo: 110 bpm in Act I, dropping to 96 bpm for the showdown, then climbing to 118 bpm for the final chant. Practice with a click that ramps between tempos to nail the transitions.

Fan and Media Reactions

“Closing bars of finale ‘When We All Come Home Alive’ left me sobbing on the Q train.”—TheaterMania review
“Only Miranda would mash salsa piano, thrash guitars, and Broadway belting—and make it land.”—Vulture
“The chant ‘Ah-she-ca’ is my new running mantra.”—listener comment under the official lyric video
“Kim Dracula steals the whole record; that breakdown is pure chaos.”—producer Mike Elizondo, launch Q&A excerpt
“I thought Hamilton was maximalist—then I heard this.”—anonymous TikTok stitch

Music video

Warriors Lyrics: Song List

  1. Survive The Night
  2. Roll Call
  3. Warriors' Cypher 
  4. Make Way For Cyrus  
  5. If You Can Count 
  6. Derailed
  7. Woodlawn Cemetery  
  8. Leave The Bronx Alive  
  9. A Track Fire And A Phone Call  
  10. Going Down 
  11. Orphan Town  
  12. Call Me Mercy  
  13. Still Breathin' 
  14. Quiet Girls  
  15. Outside Gray's Papaya  
  16. Sick Of Runnin' 
  17. The Park At Night 
  18. Luther Interlude 
  19. Cardigans 
  20. We Got You 
  21. A Light Or Somethin'  
  22. We Got You (Reprise)  
  23. Somewhere In The City  
  24. Reunion Square
  25. Same Train Home  
  26. Finale

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